"Alanis" redirects here. For her self-titled debut album, see
Alanis
(album).
| Alanis Morissette |
Alanis Morissette in December 2004
|
| Background information |
| Birth name |
Alanis Nadine Morissette |
| Born |
June 1 1974 (1974--) (age 33) |
| Origin |
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
| Genre(s) |
Rock, dance-pop, alternative rock, pop-rock, post-grunge |
| Occupation(s) |
Singer, songwriter, actress, record producer |
| Instrument(s) |
Guitar, flute, harmonica, keyboards, vocals |
| Years active |
1987–present |
| Label(s) |
MCA, Maverick, Warner Bros. Records |
| Website |
www.alanis.com |
Alanis Nadine Morissette (born in Ottawa, 1 June
1974) is a Canadian [1] singer-songwriter, record producer, and occasional actress. She has won twelve
Juno Awards and seven Grammy Awards, and has sold more
than forty million albums worldwide.[2][3]
Morissette began her career in Canada, and as a teenager recorded two dance-pop albums,
Alanis and Now Is the Time, under
MCA Records. Her international debut album was the rock-influenced Jagged Little Pill, which is the
best-selling debut album by a female artist in the U.S., and the highest selling debut album worldwide.[4][5] Morissette took up producing duties for her subsequent albums, which
include Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie,
Under Rug Swept, So-Called Chaos
and her upcoming release Flavors of Entanglement.
Biography
Early life
Alanis Morissette was born in Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada, to a French-Canadian father, Alan, and Hungarian mother, Georgia. Alanis has a twin
brother, Wade, and an older brother, Chad. During her high school years, Morissette attended Immaculata High School and graduated from Glebe Collegiate Institute in Ottawa.
At the age of six, she began playing the piano and realised she wanted to express herself
through the arts.[6] In 1984,
Morissette wrote her first song, "Fate Stay with Me", which she sent to a local folk singer, Lindsay Morgan, who recruited
Morissette as his protégé.[6]
In 1986, Morissette had her first stint as an actress: five episodes of the children's television show You Can't Do That on Television. Using money she saved from that role, she released
"Fate Stay with Me" as a single via a label she founded with Morgan. A limited number of
copies were pressed, and it received little airplay.[6] She appeared onstage with the Orpheus
Musical Theatre Society in 1985 and 1988.[7]
At a New York City audition, Morissette landed a spot on Star Search, a popular American talent competition on which she
used her stage name, Alanis Nadine. Morissette flew to Los Angeles to
appear on the show, but lost after one round. In 1988, Morissette signed a publishing deal with MCA Publishing, which helped to fund her record deal with one of its independent subsidiary
labels.[8]
1990–1993: Alanis and Now Is the Time
MCA Records released Morissette's debut album, Alanis, in Canada only in 1991, and Morissette co-wrote every track on the album with its producer,
Leslie Howe. By the time it was released, she had dropped her stage name and was credited
simply as Alanis. The dance-pop album went platinum,[9] and its first single, "Too Hot", reached the top twenty on the
RPM singles chart. Subsequent singles "Walk Away" and "Feel Your Love", which was
accompanied by a sexually suggestive video,[6] reached the top forty and were played frequently on contemporary hit radio stations.[citation needed] Morissette's popularity, style of music and appearance, particularly that
of her hair, led her to become known as the Debbie Gibson of Canada;[6] comparisons to Tiffany were also common. During the same period, she was a concert opening act for rapper
Vanilla Ice.[10] Morissette was nominated for three 1992 Juno Awards:
Most Promising Female Vocalist of the Year (which she won),
Single of the Year and Best Dance Recording (both for "Too Hot").[11]
Between the ages of fourteen to eighteen, Morissette suffered from anorexia and
bulimia nervosa, which were catalysed by "hardcore" professional pressure and managerial
demands from her work towards making her first album. She recalled returning to the studio to re-record some vocals, only to be
told that the person who summoned her there wanted to discuss her weight, and that she couldn't be successful if she was fat. She
lived on a diet of carrots, black coffee and Melba toast, and her weight fluctuated by fifteen to twenty pounds. She subsequently began therapy, which
she called "a long process to un-program [my brain]. I try to remember, whatever my body is, it's perfect the way it is."[12]
In 1992, she released her second album, Now Is the Time, a ballad-driven record that featured less glitzy production than Alanis and contained more
thoughtful lyrics.[6]
Morissette wrote the songs with the album's producer, Leslie Howe, and Serge Côté. She said of the album, "people could go, 'Boo,
hiss, hiss, this girl's like another Tiffany or whatever'. But the way I look at it ... people will like your next album if it's
a kick-ass one."[10] As with
Alanis, Now Is the Time was released only in Canada and produced three top forty singles — "An Emotion Away", the minor adult contemporary hit
"No Apologies", and "(Change Is) Never a Waste of Time". It sold little more than
half the copies of her first album, however, and was a commercial failure.[6][13] With her two-album deal with MCA Canada complete, Morissette was left without a major label
contract.
During this period, Morissette dated Dave Coulier of television's Full House fame.[14] In
1993, she appeared in the film Just One of the Girls starring
Corey Haim, which she called "horrible".[13]
1993–1995: Move to Los Angeles
In 1993, after graduating from high school, Morissette moved from Ottawa to Toronto.[6] Living alone for the first time
in her life, she met with a bevy of songwriters, but the results frustrated her.[citation needed] A visit to Nashville a few
months later also proved fruitless. In the hopes of meeting a collaborator Morissette began making trips to Los Angeles and working with as many musicians as possible.
During this time, she met producer and songwriter Glen Ballard, and within ten minutes
of meeting each other they had begun experimenting creatively.[6] According to Morissette, Ballard was the first collaborator who encouraged her to
express her emotions.[citation needed] The two wrote and recorded Morissette's third album, Jagged Little Pill, and by the spring of 1995, she had signed a deal with Maverick Records.
As Morissette later revealed,[citation needed] during her stay in L.A., a thief confronted and robbed her on a deserted
street, although he did not take the writing and brainstorming notes in her purse; they were the scribblings that soon made up
Jagged Little Pill. Morissette subsequently developed an intense and general angst, which
manifested in random daily panic attacks, including on planes. She checked herself into a
hospital and attended psychotherapy sessions, but with no improvement. She focused her inner problems on the soul-baring lyrics
of the album for her own health.[citation needed]
1995–1998: Jagged Little Pill
Maverick Records released Jagged Little Pill internationally in 1995. The album was expected to sell enough for
Morissette to make a follow-up, but the situation changed quickly when a DJ from an
influential Los Angeles radio station began playing "You Oughta Know", the album's first single.[8] The song instantly garnered attention for its scathing,
explicit lyrics,[6] and a
subsequent music video went into heavy rotation on MTV and
MuchMusic.
After the success of "You Oughta Know", the album's other hit singles helped send Jagged Little Pill to the top of the
charts. "All I Really Want" and "Hand in My
Pocket" followed, but the fourth U.S. single, "Ironic", became Morissette's biggest
hit. "You Learn" and "Head over Feet", the fifth and
sixth singles, respectively, kept Jagged Little Pill in the top twenty on the Billboard 200 albums chart for more than a year. According to the RIAA, Jagged Little Pill is the best-selling international debut album
by a female artist, with more than fourteen million copies sold in the U.S.; it sold thirty million worldwide, making it the
second biggest selling album by a female artist, and the biggest selling debut album of all time.[4][5] Morissette's popularity grew significantly in Canada, where the album
was certified twelve times platinum[9] and produced
four RPM chart-toppers: "Hand in My Pocket", "Ironic", "You Learn" and "Head over Feet". The album was also a bestseller
in Australia and the United Kingdom.[15][16]
Morissette's success with Jagged Little Pill was credited with leading to the introduction of female singers such as
Tracy Bonham, Meredith Brooks, Patti Rothberg and, in the early 2000s, Avril Lavigne and
Pink.[17] She was
criticised for collaborating with producer and supposed image-maker Ballard, and her previous albums also proved a hindrance for
her respectability, particularly in her native country.[6][18] Morissette and the album won six Juno Awards in 1996: Album of the Year, Single of the
Year ("You Oughta Know"), Female Vocalist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year and Best Rock Album.[19] At the 1996 Grammy Awards, she won Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, Best Rock Song (both for "You Oughta Know"), Best Rock Album and Album of the
Year.[20]
Later in 1996, Morissette embarked on an eighteen-month world tour in support of Jagged Little Pill, beginning in small
clubs and ending in large venues. Taylor Hawkins, currently with the Foo Fighters, was the tour's drummer. "Ironic" was nominated for two 1997 Grammy Awards — Record of the
Year and Best Music Video, Short Form[21] — and won Single of the Year at the 1997 Juno Awards, where Morissette also won Songwriter of the Year and the International Achievement
Award.[22] The video Jagged Little Pill, Live, which was co-directed by Morissette and chronicled the bulk of
her tour, won a 1998 Grammy Award for Best Music Video, Long Form.[23]
During the tour, Morissette became disillusioned with the music industry and declared being tired of constant travelling,
quick and superficial relationships and parties full of drugs — subjects that made her consider ditching her career.[citation needed] She started practicing
Iyengar Yoga for balancing, and after the last December 1996 show, she headed to
India for six weeks, accompanied by her mother, two aunts and two female friends.[24]
1998–2001: Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie and Alanis Unplugged
Morissette was featured as a guest vocalist on Ringo Starr's cover of "Drift Away" on his 1998 album, Vertical Man, and on the songs
"Don't Drink the Water" and "Spoon" on the Dave Matthews Band album
Before These Crowded Streets. She recorded the song
"Uninvited" for the soundtrack to the 1998 film
City of Angels. Although the track was never commercially released as a single, it
received widespread radio airplay in the U.S. At the 1999 Grammy Awards, it won in
the categories of Best Rock Song and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, and was nominated for Best Song Written for a Motion
Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.[25]
Later in 1998, Morissette released her fourth album, Supposed Former
Infatuation Junkie, which she wrote and produced with Glen Ballard. Most of the tracks, including "Would Not Come" and
"Unsent", challenged traditional song formulas: they included one-chord drone melodies and
Morissette singing over letter-like prose texts; some songs lacked choruses or took a long time to reach them.
Privately, the label hoped to sell a million copies of the album on initial release;[26] instead, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart
with first-week sales of 469,000 copies — a record, at the time, for the highest first-week sales of an album by a female
artist.[27] The wordy, personal lyrics on Supposed
Former Infatuation Junkie alienated many fans, and after the album sold considerably less than Jagged Little Pill,
many labelled it an example of the sophomore jinx.[6][28] However, it received positive reviews, including a four-star review from Rolling Stone.[29] In Canada,
it won the Juno Award for Best Album and was certified four times platinum.[9][30] "Thank U", the album's only major international hit
single, was nominated for the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance; the music video, which featured
Morissette nude, generated mild controversy.[26][31] Morissette
herself directed the videos for "Unsent" and "So Pure", which won, respectively, the
MuchMusic Video Award for Best
Director and the Juno Award for Video of the Year.[30][32] The "So Pure" video features actor Dash
Mihok, with whom Morissette was in a relationship at the time.[26]
Morissette contributed vocals to "Mercy" and "Innocence", two tracks on Jonathan
Elias's project The Prayer Cycle, which was released in 1999. The same
year, she released the live acoustic album Alanis Unplugged, which was recorded
during her appearance on the television show MTV Unplugged. It featured tracks from
her previous two albums alongside four new songs, including "King of Pain" (a cover of
The Police song) and "No Pressure over Cappuccino", which Morissette wrote with her main
guitar player, Nick Lashley. The recording of the Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie track "That I Would Be Good", released as a single, became a minor hit on hot adult contemporary radio in America. Also in 1999, Morissette released a live version of
her song "Are You Still Mad" on the charity album Live in the X Lounge II.
For her live rendition of "So Pure" at Woodstock '99, she was nominated for Best Female
Rock Vocal Performance at the 2001 Grammy Awards.[33]
Morissette delved into acting again, for the first time since 1993, appearing as God in the Kevin Smith film Dogma and contributing the song "Still" to its soundtrack. Smith, a fan of Morissette's, asked her to
be in the film several times.[citation needed] She had to turn down the female lead, and by the time her schedule allowed
her to participate in the film, only the role of God, which involves virtually no dialogue and only an appearance at the very end
of the film, was left.[citation needed] She also appeared in the hit HBO comedies
Sex and the City and Curb Your
Enthusiasm, and starred in the play The Vagina Monologues.
2002–2003: Under Rug Swept
In 2001, Morissette was featured with Stephanie McKay on the Tricky song "Excess", which is on his album Blowback. Morissette
released her fifth studio album, Under Rug Swept, in February 2002. For the first
time in her career, she took on the role of sole writer and producer of an album. Her band, comprising Joel Shearer, Nick Lashley, Chris Chaney and Gary Novak, played the majority of the instruments;
additional contributions came from Eric Avery, Dean
DeLeo, Flea and Meshell
Ndegeocello. Shortly after recording the album, Morissette hired an entirely new band, featuring Jason Orme, Zac Rae,
David Levita and Blair Sinta, who have been with her since.
Under Rug Swept debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, eventually going platinum in Canada and
selling one million copies in the U.S.[9][34] It produced the hit single
"Hands Clean", which topped the Canadian Singles
Chart and received substantial radio play; for her work on "Hands Clean" and "So
Unsexy", Morissette won a Juno Award for Producer of the
Year.[35] A second single, "Precious Illusions", was released, but it did not garner significant success outside Canada or U.S.
hot AC radio. Other singles from the album included "Flinch" and "Surrendering".
Later in 2002, Morissette released the combination package Feast on Scraps,
which includes a DVD of live concert and backstage documentary footage directed by her, and a CD containing eight previously
unreleased songs from the Under Rug Swept recording sessions. Preceded by the single "Simple Together", it sold roughly
70,000 copies in the U.S. and was nominated for a Juno Award for Music DVD
of the Year.[34][36] In late
2003, Morissette appeared in the off-Broadway play The Exonerated as Sunny Jacobs, a
death row inmate freed after proof surfaced that she was innocent.
2004: So-Called Chaos
In February 2003, while appearing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, DeGeneres as
a prank cut off a lock of Morissette's trademark long hair.[37] In September 2003, Morissette did have her cut to a short sideswept style and either the actual
cutting or a reenactment of this appears in the video of her next hit Everything.
Morissette hosted the Juno Awards of 2004 dressed in a bathrobe, which she took
off to reveal a flesh-coloured body-stocking, a response to the era of censorship in the U.S.
caused by Janet Jackson's breast-reveal incident during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show.[38] Morissette released her sixth studio album, So-Called Chaos, in May 2004. She wrote the songs on her own again, and co-produced the album with
Tim Thorney and pop music producer John Shanks. The album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 chart to generally mixed critical
reviews, and it became Morissette's lowest seller in the U.S.[34] The lead single, "Everything", achieved major success on adult top 40 radio in America and was moderately popular elsewhere, particularly in Canada,
although it failed to reach the top forty on the U.S. Hot 100. Because the first line
of the song includes the word asshole, American radio stations refused to play it, and the single version was changed to
include the word nightmare instead.[38] Two other singles, "Out Is Through" and "Eight Easy
Steps", fared considerably worse commercially than "Everything", although a dance mix of
"Eight Easy Steps" was a U.S. club hit.
By mid 2004, Morissette had become an ordained minister with the Universal Life
Church, a religious organization that offers anyone semi-immediate ordination as a minister free of charge.[39][40] In June, Morissette announced her engagement to actor, and fellow Canadian, Ryan Reynolds.[41] During that
time, she gave an interview to British newspaper The Mirror in which she discussed
her past homosexual relationships, having dated a twenty-nine year-old man at age fourteen and, briefly, her experiences with
drugs. In the article, she was quoted as saying: "My addictions were work and food. I smoked pot once in a while, but I'm too much of a control freak to be a drug person."[42] She expanded her acting credentials with the July release of the
Cole Porter biographical film De-Lovely, in which she performed the song "Let's Do It
(Let's Fall in Love)" and had a brief role as an anonymous stage performer. Morissette embarked on a U.S. summer tour with
long-time friends and fellow Canadians, the Barenaked Ladies, working with the
non-profit environmental organization Reverb.[43]
2005: Jagged Little Pill Acoustic and The Collection
In February 2005, Morissette became a naturalized citizen of the United States while
maintaining her Canadian citizenship. Morissette refers to herself as a
Canadian–American.[1] The same month,
she made a guest appearance on the Canadian television show Degrassi: The Next
Generation with Dogma co-star Jason Mewes and director Kevin Smith.
To commemorate the tenth anniversary of Jagged Little Pill, Morissette released a studio acoustic version, Jagged Little Pill
Acoustic, in June 2005. The album was released exclusively through Starbucks'
Hear Music retail concept through their coffee shops for a six-week run. The limited
availability led to a dispute between Maverick Records and HMV North America, who
retaliated by removing from sale Morissette's other albums for the duration of Starbucks' exclusive six-week sale.[44][45] Jagged Little Pill Acoustic sold around 300,000 copies in the U.S.,[34] and a video for "Hand in My
Pocket" received rotation on VH1 in America. The accompanying tour ran for two months in mid 2005,
with Morissette playing small theatre venues. During the same period, Morissette was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.[2]
Morissette released the greatest hits album Alanis Morissette: The Collection in late 2005. The lead single and only new
track, a cover of Seal's "Crazy", was a U.S.
adult top 40 and dance hit, but it achieved only minimal chart success elsewhere, as did the album. A limited edition of The
Collection features a DVD including a documentary with videos of two unreleased songs from Morissette's 1996 Can't Not Tour:
"King of Intimation" and "Can't Not" (a reworked version of the latter appeared on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie).
The DVD also includes a ninety-second clip of the unreleased video for the single "Joining
You". Morissette contributed the song "Wunderkind" to the soundtrack of the
film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe, and it was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for
Best Original Song.[46]
2006–present
In April 2006, MTV News reported that Morissette would reprise her role in The
Exonerated in London from May 23 through the
May 28.[47]
Rolling Stone reported in January 2006 that Morissette was in between "intense"
writing sessions for her upcoming studio album, which was to be co-produced by Mike
Elizondo, and that she was going to spend 2006 working on a memoir. She said of her book, "it will be all the wisdom I've
accrued in the thirty-one years of my life [...] A lot about relationships, fame, travel, body-image issues, spirit — with a lot
of self-deprecating humor peppered throughout, 'cause I just can't help it."[46] 2006 marked the first year in the recorded history of Morissette's
musical career that she had not a single concert appearance showcasing her own songs, with the exception of an appearance on
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in January when she performed
"Wunderkind". During this period, she delved back into acting, guest starring in an episode of Lifetime's Lovespring International and
three episodes of FX's Nip/Tuck, playing a
lesbian. In October 2006, Morissette said in an interview with TV
Guide that she was going to start writing new material over the next few weeks, saying "I usually fill two journals
for each record and at the present, I have seven journals full. I have a lot within me ready to burst out."[48]
In June 2006, People magazine reported that Morissette had split from her
fiancé, Ryan Reynolds, but neither party confirmed the report.[49] The following month, a source said that they were together,[50] Contact Music reported that their split was a "rumor",[51] and they were pictured holding hands in Los Angeles.[52] In February 2007, representatives for Morissette and
Reynolds announced that they had mutually decided to end their engagement.[53]
On April 1, 2007, Morissette released a parody of
The Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps", which she recorded in
a slow, mournful voice and accompanied only by a piano. The accompanying YouTube-hosted video, in which she dances provocatively with a group of men and hits the ones who attempt to
touch her "lady lumps", had received nearly five million views by April 13.[54] Morissette did not take any interviews to explain the song. It was
theorized that Morissette herself did it as an April Fools' Day joke.[55] Black Eyed Peas
vocalist Fergie responded by sending Morissette a buttocks-shaped cake with an approving
note.[56] By July 2007, the video had reached the top
forty on YouTube's list of the most viewed videos of all time, having garnered more than eight million hits.[57]
On June 4, 2007, Morissette performed the "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "O Canada", the
American and Canadian national anthems, in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the
Ottawa Senators and the Anaheim Ducks in
Ottawa, Ontario.[3]
2007: Flavors of Entanglement
-
Morissette performed at a gig for The Nightwatchman, a.k.a. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, at the Hotel Café
in Los Angeles on April 24, 2007. There, she said that she and
producer Guy Sigsworth had been "sequestered in London and L.A. over the last few months
writing a bevy of new songs". Accompanied by Sigsworth on piano, Morissette played a new song, "Not as We".[58] Later, the song appeared in the third episode of the fourth season of
House MD (97 Seconds) which first aired October 9th, 2007. [59]
On September 14, 2007, an interview with Guy Sigsworth, who is collaborating/co-producing Alanis' new album, was posted on Alanis' official myspace
describing the forthcoming album. Throughout the interview it was revealed that 25 songs were written for the album and although
13 have been chosen for the final cut, 8 more are in the process of being written. No official release date for a single or for
the album has been announced.[citation needed] Also a contest was started for fans to design her new myspace layout
[60] on one of her biggest "fan forums" which will end up on October 21 for the
layout to be uploaded on November 1st.
"Underneath" is the second song known to be written and recorded during the 2007 sessions. The song had an unofficial premiere
on September 15, 2007 at The Kodak
Theatre in Los Angeles, at the Elevate Film
Festival. The purpose of the festival was to create documentaries, music videos, narratives and shorts - regarding
subjects to raise the level of human consciousness on the earth. [61]
Morissette submitted her song, and then (like all other 14 videos) had the song's video written, directed, shot and edited in
two days. The music video, while not having too much of a known plot - features Morissette and a few other characters around a
pool, and swimming. The key symbol in the video tends to be water. Morissette also walks around, or lays down as she sings -
either into or off camera. The song and video was met by a very receptive crowd. [62] It is unknown whether this song will serve as an official single, and if so - if this video will be
used or not. There is still no official announcement of the new album or when it may be released.
Discography
-
Albums
Stage, film, and television
